The Truth of the Matter Pt IV– The Neurodynamics of Change

The Neurodynamics of Change

While the sky may not be falling, the world most certainly is shifting. The North Pole is now hundreds of miles away from the area I was taught in school.  In my lifetime weather patterns are changing which in turn is changing the fauna. Birch trees in northern Canada are 200 miles north of where they were found 40 years ago. Summers are hotter and winters are less predictable. Population is increasing and with this comes an increase in noise, air pollution and trash. The oceans are warming and fish populations are dying.

Meanwhile we continue to live, hoping our lifestyle will not be affected.  The question now is, “How are we doing with all these changes going on around us?” As we all tend to be self-centered, we measure the effect of these changes on our own life and not from a global perspective.  It always amazes me how often I hear people dismiss any challenge to their current position until some act or event directly affects them.

My childhood to young adult life found me living next to a volcanic mountain that constantly had steam being produced from its 10,000 foot peak. Then came the eruption of its sister mountain named Mt. St. Helens and my perspective changed! That beautiful mountain was really dangerous.

Radio, television and now the Internet has provided access to information on an instant basis, even when the information has little or nothing to do with our lives. Most of it is not good news and it is presented repeatedly, to the point where we become involved emotionally with no ability to offer any constructive action.

The Neurodynamics of this input is too great and our bodies are not designed to deal with this type of stress. Our stress response is designed for personal short term reaction and resolution of the challenge. When we start looking at the amount of stressors in our lives, we start to become aware of how much life has changed in the last 100 years. We have come from the basic stressors being the need for food, shelter and protection from predators to an over-whelming level of sensory, emotional, electromagnetic and physical stressors.  The effect of these is to overload the processing resources of the Central Nervous System.

A stressor is a message of a threat to survival and this in turn demands a counter response. The control system in charge of recording the threat and programing the response is the Central Nervous System. Now we have the control system so over loaded that incoming information designated for some specific region of the brain gets shifted to a different region is acted on based on the incoming information. However, because it is the wrong information for that region the response is inappropriate. This now creates stress within the systems and neurological imbalance spreads.

The stress effects reach all the way from cortical neurological networks to immune and endocrine system functions.  Today we are seeing an exponential growth in autoimmune system disorders and multiple chemical sensitivity illnesses.  These are all directly traceable to stress effects.  Today research attributes stress as the foundation of 95% of all illness and disease. The other 5% are called genetic in nature which is really “stress” at the cellular level.

The only way the nervous system can inform the conscious mind that there is an imbalance, which is now beyond safety limits, is to create signs or symptoms.  Medicine can only come into play based on these signs and symptoms and while drugs may seem like a good way to reduce the challenges, they do nothing to reduce the basic cause of the problem. In fact, over time they create an increase in the imbalance and become a stressor, which creates the need for more drug therapy. This medical approach has led to the situation today where the average American of age 50 is on at least 5 different medications and by age 70 – 7 to 8 drugs.  This system is failing to the point where prescription drugs have become the number one cause of death in America today.

Three research papers have demonstrated the effectiveness of Chiropractic care to improve the processing resources of the Central Nervous System. Today instrumentation is available to analyze the state of neurological responses to critical stressors and congruent recovery ability. The stress response report can show the level of neurological imbalance and therefore help design an ideal care and retraining program.

Stress is part of life; learning how to cope is part of living well.  Neurologically Based Chiropractic and the NeuroInfiniti are the future of the profession and the way back to health.

To read the next article in this series, click HERE.

By Richard Barwell, D.C.

Dr. Barwell is the Founder and President of the Chiropractic Equity Offices, Inc. program, and has more than thirty years of experience in chiropractic practice. After graduating from Canadian Memorial Chiropractic College with clinic honors in 1964, he started a family Wellness Practice in British Columbia. He has since established numerous successful practices, won several awards and guest lectured at various chiropractic institutions. Before establishing CEO, Inc. Dr. Barwell was the Director of Seminars and Programs at Quest and Executive Director of the Chiropractic Leadership Alliance.

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